United States

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investments,

Authored by Jared Dillian 'The 10th Man' via MauldinEconomics.com,

A little bit of paranoia is always healthy.

In the 1980s, the totalitarian fear was that some overenthusiastic government agent would go to the library and pull your library card to see if you were reading seditious texts.

Seems a bit quaint now, doesn’t it? 

It didn’t at the time.

Of course, the East German Stasi went to those lengths to spy on its citizens, but there was never any real danger of it happening in the US.

As if Illinois didn't have enough to worry about between an imminent downgrade to junk (as soon as July 1), soaring debt costs, insolvent pension funds, and roads that may soon resemble the lunar surface, today in the latest insult to a relentless series of injuries, the lottery itself is about to dump Illinois.

Less than a day after the Senate overwhelmingly voted to impose new sanctions against the Kremlin, on Thursday Germany and Austria - two of Russia's biggest energy clients in Europe - slammed the latest U.S. sanctions against Moscow, saying they could affect European businesses involved in piping in Russian natural gas.

Authored by George Friedman and Jacob Shapiro via MauldinEconomics.com,

There’s no end in sight to slumping oil prices - good news for consumers but a dire development for major oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia. And now, rising US oil production and exports are contributing to the slump.